The Crayon Papers

range of benches commanding a view of the walks and avenues of the garden. This genial nook is a place of great resort in the latter part of autumn and in fine days in winter, as it seems to retain the flavor of departed summer. On a calm, bright morning it is quite alive with nursery-maids and their playful little charges. Hither also resort a number of ancient ladies and gentlemen, who, with the laudable thrift in small pleasures and small expenses for which the French are to be noted, come here to enjoy sunshine and save firewood. Here may often be seen some cavalier of the old school, when the sunbeams have warmed his blood into something like a glow, fluttering about like a frost-bitten moth thawed before the fire, putting forth a feeble show of gallantry among the antiquated dames, and now and then eying the buxom nursery-maids with what might almost be mistaken for an air of libertinism.
    Among the habitual frequenters of this place I had often remarked an old gentleman whose dress was decidedly ante-revolutional. He wore the three-cornered cocked hat of the ancien regime ; his hair was frizzed over each ear into ailes de pigeon , a style strongly savoring of Bourbonism; and a queue stuck out behind, the loyalty of which was not to be disputed. His dress, though ancient, had an air of decayed gentility, and I observed that he took his snuff out of an elegant though old-fashioned gold box. He appeared to be the most popular man on the walk. He had a compliment for every old lady, he kissed every child, and he patted every little dog on the head; for children and little dogs are very important members of society in France. I must observe, however, that he seldom kissed a child without, at the same time, pinching the nursery-maid’s cheek; a Frenchman of the old school never forgets his devoirs to the sex.
    I had taken a liking to this old gentleman. There was an habitual expression of benevolence in his face which I have very frequently remarked in these relics of the politer days of France. The constant interchange of those thousand little courtesies which imperceptibly sweeten life have a happy effect upon the features, and spread a mellow evening charm over the wrinkles of old age.
    Where there is a favorable predisposition one soon forms a kind of tacit intimacy by often meeting on the same walks. Once or twice I accommodated him with a bench, after which we touched hats on passing each other; at length we got so far as to take a pinch of snuff together out of his box, which is equivalent to eating salt together in the East; from that time our acquaintance was established.
    I now became his frequent companion in his morning promenades, and derived much amusement from his good-humored remarks on men and manners. One morning, as we were strolling through an alley of the Tuileries, with the autumnal breeze whirling the yellow leaves about our path, my companion fell into a peculiarly communicative vein, and gave me several particulars of his history. He had once been wealthy, and possessed of a fine estate in the country and a noble hotel in Paris; but the revolution, which effected so many disastrous changes, stripped him of everything. He was secretly denounced by his own steward during a sanguinary period of the revolution, and a number of the bloodhounds of the Convention were sent to arrest him. He received private intelligence of their approach in time to effect his escape. He landed in England without money or friends, but considered himself singularly fortunate in having his head upon his shoulders; several of his neighbors having been guillotined as a punishment for being rich.
    When he reached London he had but a louis in his pocket, and no prospect of getting another. He ate a solitary dinner of beefsteak, and was almost poisoned by port wine, which from its color he had mistaken for claret. The dingy look of the chop-house, and of the little mahogany-colored box in which he ate his dinner, contrasted sadly with the gay saloons of Paris. Everything looked gloomy and disheartening. Poverty stared him in the face; he turned over the few shillings he had of change; did not know what was to become of him; and—went to the theater!
    He took his seat in the pit, listened attentively to a tragedy of which he did not understand a word, and which seemed made up of fighting, and stabbing, and scene shifting, and began to feel his spirits sinking within him; when, casting his eyes into the orchestra, what was